I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, about 5 miles from Stanford University campus in Palo Alto. At that time Stanford had an agreement with the city that there would be no bars or liquor stores within a certain distance from the campus. But this arrangement didn’t apply to the next town over, Menlo Park. So, very close to the campus, there were two beer and burger joints that were big hangouts.

These were The Dutch Goose, on Alameda de las Pulgas, and The Oasis on El Camino Real. Both of them served draft Anchor Steam Beer. (The Goose is still there, much gentrified, but The Oasis is sadly gone.)

In 1968 though, Anchor Steam was amazing. I soon discovered another place that served it in San Francisco: The Old Spaghetti Cafe and Excelsior Coffee House in North Beach. (The original, not the chain imitator.)

The “Spag Fac” was actually an old spaghetti factory filled with antiques. A full dinner could be had for $2.25. For this reason it had been a favorite hangout of hipsters and beatniks for years, and they poured Steam beer from Anchor’s ancient Golden Gate style kegs. I hung out there too, with a pint or two before a folk music show at Coffee and Confusion around the corner.

I was hooked on good beer, but it was expensive. A bottle of Guiness could set you back more than fifty cents in 1973! At that time a half a buck could buy two gallons of gas!
So as a UCSB student with a taste for good beer and no money, I was intrigued when I discovered a Santa Barbara store called Wine Arts, and saw that they sold beer making supplies. The proprietor was very helpful, and sold me a book by home brewing pioneers Stanley Anderson and Raymond Hull. For ingredients I bought two cans of John Bull Extract, a pound of crystal malt, Fuggles hops, and Vierka Munich yeast. Following the instructions from the book, I ended up with a beer that tasted very much like Anchor Steam! This started my 50 year love affair with craft beer.
When I moved back to the Bay Area, I found that others shared my passion, and soon home brewing stores started to appear in towns like San Jose, Morgan Hill, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. There I found an Englishman’s guide to beer brewing to add to my library.

In liquor stores I started to see Anchor Steam in bottles. Brands like New Albion, DeBakker, Golden Bear, Palo Alto Brewing, and Pete’s appeared next to them not long after. Most of these are long gone, some due to undercapitalization, others due to mismanagement. Their proprietors were, after all, home brewers with little business operation experience. (It’s worth noting that home brewer Pete Slosberg chose to contract the brewing of his Wicked Ale out to August Schell Brewing in New Ulm, MN, making it widely available.)

The owner of the home brew supplies store in Chico, however, showed how it was properly done. Ken Grossman’s secret to success: learn how to do everything in an industry where there were limited supplies, equipment, and talent. Then work 12-hour days, seven days a week, for 20 years. Bring the kids to the brewery on Sundays to play among the piles of equipment and materials. Simple! Thus was born Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Fritz Maytag, meanwhile, was also showing the industry how it was done. As a Stanford student Fritz haunted The Oasis and Dutch Goose, where, despite its inconsistency he learned to love Anchor Steam Beer. When he heard the company was failing due to falling sales, he bought the place! As the story goes, Fritz was eager to update the Steam Beer recipe, and was visited first by a salesman offering him samples of a new type of crystal malt, and then by one who suggested Northern Brewer hops. He incorporated them both into his new recipe. With its success assured, Anchor Brewing moved to the former MJB coffee roastery, a wonderful Art Deco edifice in the Potrero District of San Francisco.

I visited the by-then well-established brewery in 1985. The place was a veritable museum of San Francisco brewing history. There was lots of Anchor breweriana, as well as signage and artifacts from SF breweries of the past. We didn’t get to meet Fritz, but we saw his lab, and it was clear from that how dedicated he was to maintaining the quality of his brew.
We saw the incredibly beautiful all-copper brewhouse he’d imported from Germany. We saw the antique bottling line, and the filling equipment for Anchor’s 1950s Golden Gate kegs.

But the best part of the tour was Anchor’s tasting room, centered around an ancient bar from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast past. On this Winter Solstice afternoon in 1985 the sun poured through the clerestory windows behind the bar, and lit up the dark amber and ruby highlights of my glass of Old Foghorn barley wine. It was a moment I’ll never forget.

Epilogue: I recently had a chance to taste an Old Foghorn that had been cellared for 25 years. It was magnificent, a true testament to the meticulous care that Mr. Maytag applied to his brewing.
We compared it to a similarly aged pony bottle of Old Crustacean from Rogue Ales that had definitely seen better days. Thanks Fritz!

Update The Anchor Brewing Company, closed since 2023, has had it’s intellectual property, assets, brands and real estate purchased, and pending the resolution of some structural issues in the building is slated to reopen some time in the near future, hopefully before the end of 2025.